A look forward to next week’s Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF)

I have my tickets to the official events. I’ll be seeing a lot
more fringe concerts this year than I have some times, because
I’ll be writing about several events for the American Recorder. In
addition, I expect to hang around the exhibition and buy music and
maybe even instruments.

Advice for beginners

If you’ve never been to BEMF before, the array of opportunities
is probably both dazzling and confusing.

Start out by just getting a pass to the exhibition, which also
gets you into masterclasses and lectures.. While you’re there, you can get concert tickets
for whatever you want to see, and you’ll hear lots of people
playing instruments and giving small concerts. Then look at thefringe
concerts, and go to whatever strikes you as interesting.

If you’re going to be doing a lot of running around to concerts
not in the same vicinity, get a day or week pass on the MBTA. The
7-day pass for $15 is a really good deal.

I took it a little easier this time on tickets to the official
concerts than I have some times. I’m sure I’ll end up hearing as
many concerts as I want to. And I passed up some good ones at
11PM, remembering how hard it was to keep my eyes open at a couple
of them last year. I’m sure it will be a good lute concert, but I
doubt that I’d be a good lute concert audience member.

Consider going to the masterclasses for any instrument you’re
interested in. I always go to the recorder one, and I try to get
to Ellen Hargis’ voice one. But in general, they get people who
are known to be good teachers of their instrument, and you can get
a good idea of what it’s like to learn the instrument, even, or
maybe especially when the students aren’t very advanced.

Fringe events

What follows are suggestions for things I know I’d be
interested in. I won’t get to them all, and you won’t get to
everything you’d be interested in either.

Early Music America is sponsoring a Young
Performers Festival, which will have events every day. It’s
apparently specifically designed to provide more Renaissance music
than the heavily Baroque official concerts. It also will provide
some brass and reeds, which the official concerts pretty much
ignore again this year. And the Saturday concert will do the
polychoral music of the transition between the Renaissance and the
Baroque, which everyone thinks they love, but hardly anyone has
the resources to perform.

Sunday

Convivium Musicum will be singing the BU Marsh Chapel service.
This is always just an hour between 11AM & noon, always broadcast live on
WBUR, 90.9FM. They will sing the service music which includes pieces by
Charles Villiers Stanford & John Rutter, a famous shape note tune arr. by
Alice Parker, a Monteverdi Kyrie, Richard Farrant’s “Call to Remembrance”,
& two Victoria & Guerrero motets from their current “Armada” concert.

2pm,
Vox Lucens Renaissance Choir (Jay Lane, director). Nicholas Gombert’s Missa Quam Pulchra Es.
Spectacular and rarely performed, this work is an opulent tapestry in sound. Based on a motet by Bauldeweyn, the mass weaves six voices together to create complex and beautifully unexpected sonorities. It has been newly edited for this performance from a 16th-century print. Goethe-Institut, 170 Beacon Street, Boston. $15/$12 st, sr, BEMF. 978-897-5372 or jaydlane@comcast.net.

Monday

4pm El Fuego (Teri Kowiak, voice; Dan Meyers, voice,
recorder & percussion; Zoe Weiss, viola da gamba & Baroque
violoncello; Salome Sandoval, voice, vihuela & Baroque
guitar). A Cantar y Bailar! An exploration of the villancicos
and zacaras in the 16th & 17th centuries from Spain to the New
World (Mexico and Guatemala). Works by Juan del Encina, Juan de
Araujo, Fray Francisco de Santiago, and Rafael Antonio
Castellanos. Beacon Hill Friends House. $10 suggested
donation. 617-227-9118 or directors@bhfh.org. The is one of the
ones I’ll be writing about, and a friend assures me that the
singer is wonderful.

Tuesday

12:15pm Travessada (Peter H. Bloom, Eric Haas, David Place,
and Na’ama Lion, Renaissance flutes). From the 20 & 7 Songs. A
concert featuring chansons from the Vingt et Sept Chanson
Musicales, published in 1533 by Pierre Attaingnant, in
Paris. This publication was the first to indicate part songs to
be played specifically by a concert of transverse flutes. So, of
course, it is at the very heart of our repertoire. We’ll play
songs by Sermisy, Gombert, Passerau, and others. Kings’
Chapel. $3 suggested donation. 617-459-1648 or
info@travessada.info. Another one I’ll be writing about. You
don’t get to hear Renaissance flutes that often.

2pm Rebecca Pechefsky, harpsichord. The Mietke Concerts,
Part I. Music by Byrd, Bach, Fischer, and Krebs, performed on a
German single-manual harpsichord by Owen Daly, after Michael
Mietke, Berlin, 1710. Sponsored by Quill Classics in conjunction
with Owen Daly Early Keyboard Instruments. Goethe-Institut
Boston. $15/$10 st, sr, EMA, SEHKS, MHKS, WEKA. 646-263-9122 or
rpechefsky@gmail.com. Like most of the keybord events on this
list, this is recommended by my sister, who belongs to most of
that alphabet soup.

5:15pm Early Music Faculty of University of North Texas
(Keith Collins, dulcian & Baroque bassoon; Christoph Hammer,
harpsichord; Jennifer Lane, mezzo-soprano; Paul Leenhouts,
recorder; Kathryn Montoya, Baroque oboe; Cynthia Roberts,
Baroque violin; Allen Whear. Baroque violoncello). Capricci di
virtuosi: Vocal and Instrumental Italian Baroque Music. Works by
Fontana, Rossi, de Selma, Marini, Cesti, Jacchini, Sammartini,
Porpora, and Vivaldi. Church of the Covenant. $15/$10 st, sr,
EMA. amstelox@gmail.com. I’m sure this is an offshoot of the
EMA Young Performers Festival, but it isn’t listed there, and if
you have the chance, these are performers you should hear.

3:30pm Judith Conrad, clavichord. Attaingnant 1531: The
Periwinkle of the Keyboard Players. Music from the seven volumes
of keyboard transcriptions published in early 1531 by Jacques
Attaingnant in Paris – the first relatively cheap printed keyboard
music ever. Triple- and quadruple-fretted clavichords by Andreas
Hermert (after Woytzig, 1688) and Owen Daly (after Wroclaw,
ca. 1470). Paulist Center Library. $20 suggested donation to
benefit the Iraq Family Relief Fund. 508-674-6128 or
judithconrad@mindspring.com. There aren’t many people who have
done more clavichord concerts than Judith (my sister).

Thursday

9am–12 noon Schubert and the Piano (Sylvia Berry & Stephen Porter, piano; Clara Rottsolk, soprano).Composer-era instruments tell us a compelling tale, once we listen attentively. Some of Franz Schubert’s best-known and best-loved Lieder and solo piano music will be performed, including the composer’s great, final piano sonata in B flat, D.960. The piano is a 6½-octave 1830s Viennese “Grafendorfer” made by R.J. Regier of Freeport, Maine: it unites tonal and mechanical characteristics drawn from instruments by such builders as Conrad Graf and Ignaz Bösendorfer, among the last to feature an all-wood design.

9am-12:30pm The Viola da Gamba Society of America. The Gamba
Gamut. A series of seven mini-programs of music spanning the
repertoire of the viola da gamba, performed by emerging and
established artists of the Viola da Gamba Society of America,
including Phillip Serna, Andre O’Neil, Anne Legene, Entwyned,
Long and Away, Arcadia Viols, and La Donna Musicale. Cathedral
Church of St. Paul. FREE, donations welcome. 662-816-9959 or
susanmarchant19@yahoo.com. These mini-programs are a good way
to see what people are doing with a given instrument, and of
course it’s like the New England Weather — if you don’t like it
now, wait 10 minutes and it will be different.

12 noon New York Continuo Collective (Grant Herreid,
director; Pat O’Brien & Charles Weaver, musical coaches). Crimes
and Passion: Love and the Criminal Underworld in Spanish
17th-century Song. A semi-staged performance of Spanish
17th-century song, drawing on two entremeses (dramatic
interludes): La Visita de la Cárcel (the Visit to the Jail), by
Luis Quiñones de Benavente; and the anonymous la Cárcel de
Sevilla. The program interweaves popular tunes with courtly
songs by José Marin, and features reconstructions of jácaras and
folias, some improvised by the performers. The performance,
featuring the singers and players of the Continuo Collective on
Baroque guitars, vihuelas, lutes, and bajon, will include a
guest appearance by Ensemble Viscera, a leading group in the
performance of Spanish 17th-century popular song, and jácara in
particular. Gordon Chapel, Old South Church. Admission by
donation. 718-636-5706 or 646-239-3522 (during Festival) or
ContinuoNY@aol.com. I’ve never managed to hear this group, but
people who do always come away impressed.

12:15pm Renaissonics (John Tyson, recorders & pipe and
tabor; Laura Gulley, violin; Daniel Rowe, violoncello; Miyuki
Tsurutani, recorders & harpsichord). Renaissance Chamber
Music. A program of brilliant Italian and English polyphonic
chamber music featuring works of Orlando Gibbons, John Baldwyn,
Vincenzo Ruffo, Salomone Rossi, Tarquinio Merula, and Thomas
Morley’s phenomenal example of polyrhythmic complexity, Christes
Crosse. In true Renaissance spirit, the program celebrates the
performer’s freedom to improvise extensively in a variety of
styles and forms — chamber music, dance music, and free improvisation. Brown Hall, New England Conservatory. $15. 617-585-1130 or continuingeducation@necmusic.edu.
This is one I’ll be writing about, and I transcribed some of the music
for it. Another concert that fills a gap in the official
festival world-view — polyphony this complicated can’t be done
with a pickup group that learned to play with a conductor in the
conservatory.

2pm Fire and Folly (Rachel Begley, recorder & bassoon;
Abigail Karr, violin; Ezra Selzer, violoncello; Jeffrey
Grossman, harpsichord). Mixed Marriages. A dynamic program
bringing together unlikely instrumental forces and national
styles: brilliantly orchestrated trio sonatas for both recorder
and violin, and violin and bassoon, by Telemann and Vivaldi;
tender Scottish folksongs set by the Italian Barsanti; and the
fusion of French and Italian styles in works by Couperin and
Handel. Beacon Hill Friends House. $15/$10 st, sr, BEMF, EMA,
ARS. 631-921-4229 or rachelbegleyrecorder@yahoo.com. I have
heard Rachel play bassoon, so if you need more reeds than you’re
getting, this is a good one.

2:30pm Capella Alamire and the Alamire Consort (Peter
Urquhart, director). The Legacy of Jean Mouton: Chansons à 3, à
4 and à 5,
and the Missa Du bon du cueur. Capella Alamire and the
Alamire Consort perform music by Jean Mouton and Noel
Bauldeweyn, two 16th-century Franco-Flemish masters of
polyphony. The mass is performed from manuscript facsimile
(MunichBS 6) by Capella Alamire (Eric, Johanna, Anna, and Clara
Swarzentruber, Sophia Urquhart, and Melinda McMahon), with the
assistance of the Consort (Robert Stibler, cornetto; Melinda
McMahon, harp & voice; Paul Merrill, sackbut & voice; Emily
Swarzentruber Urquhart, viol). Lindsey Chapel, Emmanuel
Church. $15 suggested donation/$10 st. 603-205-3814 or
peter.urquhart@unh.edu. This is one I’ll be writing about. I
didn’t want to clutter the list, but they’re doing the same
program on Wednesday at 2PM in the MIT Chapel. Provides some
early brass.

Friday

10am (also 1PM) The Newberry Consort (Ellen Hargis, soprano; David
Douglass, violin; Russell Wagner, Ken Perlow, Phillip Serna &
Craig Trompeter, viola da gamba). Elizabeth I (1912): An Early
Movie with Early Music. One of Sarah Bernhardt’s most successful
theatrical productions, Les amours de la reine Élizabeth (The
loves of Queen Elizabeth), was made into a full-length feature
film. Fledgling movie mogul Anton Zukor understood the film’s
potential and brought it to the U.S., and as a result, garnered
enough profits to start what is now Paramount Pictures. Newberry
Consort director David Douglass has turned this early
20th-century phenomenon into a one-of-a-kind work of performance
art by creating a soundtrack of Elizabethan music performed live
to this silent film. A five-part consort of violin and viols,
along with soprano Ellen Hargis, perform dramatic music written
about the historical events surrounding Elizabeth and her
court — including the English victory over the Spanish Armada;
Elizabeth’s tragic relationship with Robert Devereaux, the Earl
of Essex; and Elizabeth’s eventual demise – as accompaniment to
the film. Modern Theatre at Suffolk University. $20/$5 BEMF,
Suffolk University students. 617-557-6537 or
moderntheatre@suffolk.edu.

2pm ¡Sacabuche! (Linda Pearse, artistic director & sackbut; Ann Waltner, co-director & speaker; Wendy Gillespie, viola da gamba; Huang Ruo, composer; Qin Fang, speaker; Yang Yi, guzheng; Carrie Tsujui Chin, sheng; Sarah Barbash-Riley, Ray Horton & François Godère, sackbut; Martie Perry & Janelle Davis, Baroque violin; Elise Figa, soprano; Andrew Rader, countertenor; Benjamin Geier, tenor; Eunji Lee, organ; Cathy Barbash, producer). Matteo Ricci: His Map and Music. A multimedia performance reanimating the pivotal cultural exchange between Italian Jesuits and Chinese literati in 17th-century China. This program premiered at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, China, and combines music and dramatic readings, visually framed by a projected digitized version of the world map created by Matteo Ricci and presented to the Wanli Emperor. The repertoire includes Italian music of Ricci’s Italy performed on period instruments, Chinese music of Ricci’s China performed on Chinese instruments, as well as collaborative new works composed for ¡Sacabuche! and two Chinese instrumentalists by Chinese composer Huang Ruo. Performed as part of the Early Music America Young Performers Festival. Cathedral Church of St. Paul. $25/$15 st, sr, BEMF, EMA. 812-219-1034 or dpearse@indiana.edu.

3:45pm Renaissonics and Hesperus (Tina Chancey & Dana
Maiben, Renaissance violin; James Johnston, violin & viola;
Grant Herreid & Douglas Freundlich, lute; John Tyson, recorders
& pipe and tabor; Daniel Rowe, violoncello; Miyuki Tsurutani,
recorders & harpsichord). Improv Cabaret. Renaissance music’s
hottest improvisers in an all-star jam session. Relax in Rustic
Kitchen’s elegant Atrium, and get your polyphonic groove
on. Rustic Kitchen. FREE to Rustic Kitchen patrons. 617-423-5700
or http://www.rustickitchen.biz. Lots of early music was really
written for your dining and dancing pleasure — have some where
you can actually eat and drink. (I don’t know about the
dancing, but you can probably figure it out if you want to.)

Saturday

5pm Canto Armonico (Simon Carrington, director), with Bálint Karosi, organ. A Praetorius Organvespers for Pentecost. Program to include organvespers featuring chant, concerted motets by Michael Praetorius and his contemporaries, and an organ Magnificat by Heinrich Scheidemann. First Lutheran Church, Boston. Freewill offering. 617-489-8827 or canto.armonico.usa@gmail.com.